Speaking at the Medical Group Management Association Conference October 29 in Philadelphia, Phyllis Schuck, CIO of Pinehurst (N.C.) Surgical Clinic, stressed the need to improve all processes before automating them. “Technology really doesn’t fix broken processes,” she said. “But it can magnify broken processes.”
Based on her clinic’s experience in implementing an EHR, Schuck offered other tips, including:
* Only consider vendors who’ve been in business at least seven years, so they have a track record.
* Make sure the vendor has successfully deployed interfaces to the practice management and lab systems in place at your practice.
* When hosting demonstrations of software at your practice, require the vendor to demonstrate how the application would handle your specific workflows.
* Schedule site visits to organizations similar to yours, and bring multiple users from various departments, such as nurses, schedulers and cashiers.
* Purchase hardware from the records software vendor, even if it costs more than buying it directly from the manufacturer, so that one company is responsible for resolving any problems that arise.
The surgical group, which has 36 physicians, used document imaging to scan in all its paper records, but indexed only two year’s worth of data to make it easily searchable through the EHR from Allscripts LLC, Chicago, Schuck said. She also noted that her physicians demanded having three options for inputting data, including point-and-click templates, conventional dictation for transcription later and voice recognition.
Be the first to comment on this post using the section below.